I Love You, Man: A Singletude Review

It's official! I have a crush! Since it arrived from Netflix, I've been in deep like with I Love You, Man. The bromance of the century is as spit-out-your-Sprite funny as the likes of Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up, but the themes it addresses through dialogue so achingly real it feels like a hammer to the funny bone elevate this flick several cuts above. So why am I still withholding affection? Because while the movie skewers matrimania, it still demonizes singles.

Meet Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd), a straight-laced, dependable, ambitious yet sensitive real estate agent in touch with his feminine side. Now meet Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones), sweet, attractive, easygoing co-owner of a retail boutique. The two live in a beautiful house in the suburbs of LA, and Peter has just proposed. They have it all, which usually signals the end of the movie. Not in this case.

See, Peter is missing something--friends. Oh, he has co-workers and acquaintances, even fencing buddies, but no one close enough to stand up for him at his wedding. After he overhears Zooey's BFFs critiquing his social skills, he has an epiphany: "I gotta get some f****** friends!" he vows. From that point on, he becomes a man on a mission to cleverly exploit every parallel to contemporary dating cliches. In the process, he endures misguided "set-ups" (one of which includes possibly the best projectile vomiting scene in cinematic history), discovers that men online lie about their age, and agonizes over how soon to call for that first "man date." The expected hilarity ensues, not just because Peter isn't actually romancing these guys but because it hits home that much of the same hope, anxiety, frustration, and excitement that we associate with dating applies to courting a new friend, as well.

Now enter Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a womanizing, Cheeto-munching, bar-brawling, air guitar-riffing man's man. Here the movie takes a detour to Fight Club Lite as Sydney bonds with Peter, teaching him to speak Guy (a language he flubs often and spectacularly), obey the rules of the brotherhood, and grow a pair. It's all good, and Peter is feeling the brotherly love until his fiancee fears that their relationship is threatening to become a menage a trois.

Because this is, after all, a Hollywood comedy, alter egos Peter and Sydney must each know something the other needs to learn in order to grow and change. Peter, obviously, needs friends. Director John Hamburg has decided that Sydney needs a girlfriend. Or maybe not a girlfriend yet--mercifully, the set-up that Peter and Zooey force on him doesn't work out--but the maturity and interpersonal skills necessary to land one. Therein lies the reason for my love-hate relationship with I Love You, Man.

What the movie does right is present a positive model for a balanced relationship that is not overly couplecentric. Peter and Zooey love each other and enjoy spending time together, but, by the end, they also have fulfilling lives apart with their own friends and career interests. The message that marital partners can't be each other's "everything," that they need platonic friends outside the relationship, is so enlightened and exceptional in the entertainment world that singles with singletude can't help but fall hard for this film.

On the other hand, as much fun and heart as Sydney brings to this story, he's still a caricature of the aging bachelor who refuses to grow up while all his friends are settling down. In one troubling scene, he phones everyone he knows to make weekend plans but is rejected by one after the other. Turns out his friends have wives and children who top their priority lists. Ok, Mr. Hamburg, we get it. When push comes to shove, family trumps friends. Fine. But then you pull out the heavyweights, the three Bs, and leave Sydney looking bummed, bored, and bereft. This is a guy who supposedly has a successful investment business, a collection of high-end guitars he rocks out on, a dog he's devoted to, and friends he hangs with a few times a week. Yet the one day everyone is busy, he's presented as a pathetic no-life who can't find a way to amuse himself on his own. Then there's Zooey's token single friend, who is, of course, a whiny, desperate Plain Jane (the cool, sexy one is married) and a mini-lesson toward the end about respecting the privacy of interactions within the sanctum of the relationship. These elements combine to proclaim a message that matrimaniacs are losers, but singles are losers, too, that to strike a successful balance, one should find a happy, healthy relationship or at least accept that relationships make the world go round. I'm down with the first half of that thesis but not the second.

In fantasyland, Sydney teaches Peter what he needs to learn without ever succumbing to the vices of stereotypical bachelorhood. But then there wouldn't be a conflict, and as all wannabe screenwriters know, a script without conflict is like a platinum wedding without a bridezilla. Or something. Anyway, it doesn't sell. Though I can't commit my whole heart to I Love You, Man, as the only movie in recent memory to call out matrimaniacs and lampoon intensive coupling, it still has me pretty infatuated.




How important do you think it is for a couple to maintain separate friendships outside their relationship? What can couples do to balance time together and time apart? How do you think bachelors are usually portrayed in Hollywood? Is the Hollywood version of the bachelor at all representative of the single men you know? If you've seen I Love You, Man, what are your thoughts on the movie? Do you think it has a positive or a negative message about singles in general and single men in particular? What does it say to you about matrimania/intensive coupling/enmeshed or codependent relationships? By the end of the movie, do you think Peter and Zooey provide a healthy model for couples or not? Can you recommend any other movies that tackle matrimania?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have an unpublished rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a "Singletude Q&A" or your rant or rave in a "Singletude Sound-off"! Singletude makes every effort to republish submissions in their original form but reserves the right to edit your submission for length and clarity.

Bad Marriages Break Men's Hearts, Too

As a postscript to "Bad Marriages Break (Women's) Hearts," I'd like to share an article that I found just a day or two after I last blogged. "Bad Marriages Harder on Women's Health" by Kathleen Doheny appeared in the online edition of U.S. News & World Report as a response to the aforementioned research linking stressful marriage to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome in women. However, this version of the report included some info that the others conveniently omitted.

Specifically, the U.S. News article includes commentary from Dr. Debra Umberson of the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Umberson, who is also an expert on the health effects of marital stress, reveals that her research paints a different picture--one with a much darker palette for men: "'Basically, we find that marital strain undermines the health of men and women,' she says, adding that perhaps the men in [Nancy] Henry's study had their health influenced in a different way." (ital added)

According to her CV, Umberson has been publishing her work on the interaction between gender and marital conflict for several years now, yet I can't recall major media players jumping all over it in the way they did the recent University of Utah study. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please. Some of you may remember news stories that I'm forgetting.) Could it be that the American media is not as interested in publicizing how unhappy relationships affect men's health? If not, why not?

My initial thought was that with so many men defecting from traditional marriage bonds, conservative-slanted publications might be squelching any research that would further dissuade them from tying the knot. But then it occurred to me that we also live in a society that clings to certain preconceptions about gender roles which make it less acceptable for men to be emotionally invested in their relationships or to exhibit depression and other outward signs of distress over relationship conflict. Women's magazines remind us that relationships aren't central to a man's identity, that instead of moping by the phone and overanalyzing with friends, a guy lets his troubles roll off his back along with big drops of sweat at the gym. In effect, American women are taught that relationship failure will leave them on the verge of collapse, while men are taught that their hearts should take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. So the suppression of research proving that men aren't as invulnerable as we'd like to think fits the dominant cultural message about gender roles.

Whatever the reason that Umberson's findings were overlooked, Singletude is setting the record straight for readers here: Marital problems depress both women and men and may increase the likelihood that both sexes will develop health issues. Henry's research is not and surely will not be the final word.

Whew! Just had to get that off my chest. Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging!


Do you think more public attention is paid to research that reinforces gender stereotypes as opposed to research that disproves them? Can you think of any other reasons that Henry's study was so well publicized while Umberson's contradictory results were not? What do you think might explain the discrepancy between their conclusions? Have you noticed news sources applying selective reporting to singles issues as well?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have a rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a Singletude Q&A or your rant or rave in a Singletude Sound-off!